Barry Holloway
, first post-independence speaker of the Papua New Guinea Parliament, remembers the early days of the country’s transition to post-colonial rule nostalgically as a time of hope and expectation.

First elected to PNG’s House of Assembly in 1964, Sir Barry was a member of a small activist group, including the radio broadcaster
Michael Somare
, who met as part of what was known as the “bully-beef club’’ (tea and biscuits and bully beef), forerunner of the Pangu Party that guided the country to independence in 1975.

Somare went on to become PNG’s first post-independence prime minister, the “grand chief’’, as he is called, prime minister again since 2002 until he was deposed in August by Parliament, and reinstated controversially by the Governor-General, Michael Ogio, prompting what has become a full-blown constitutional crisis.

The Pangu Party’s creed was honesty, humility and hard work (Pangu was an acronym for Papua New Guinea with a “u’’ rather than an “a’’ to avoid the connotation of a long knife, the panga).

This week’s events in which PNG found itself with two prime ministers, two police commissioners and a constitutional stand-off on its hands is shocking for people like Sir Barry whose – perhaps naïve – expectations of a young democracy were for a future that was not contaminated by money and power.

“While all this money flows in we’re candidates for Dutch disease,’’ he says, referring to The Economist’s description of resource riches not necessarily benefiting the economy as a whole.

PNG’s resources boom is dragging billions of dollars of investment into the country, including a $15.7 billion LNG project that will transform the local economy, adding one-fifth to GDP after it comes on stream in 2014.

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ExxonMobil is leading the project in partnership with Oil Search and Santos.

This is only one of dozens of exploration and development projects that are proliferating across PNG’s mountainous terrain, along its vast river systems, including the Fly and the Sepik, and offshore.

The Minister for Petroleum and Energy, William Duma, captured some of the flavour of an extraordinary period in PNG’s development in a speech to a packed mining and energy conference in Port Moresby earlier this month.

“Clearly, PNG LNG is the first major step. But a journey comprises many steps,’’ Duma said.

“Following PNG LNG will be world-class projects based upon the extensive resources of the Gulf of Papua – both onshore and offshore – driven by companies such as InterOil, Talisman, Horizon and Eaglewood.’’

Duma noted that Petromin of PNG and Royal Dutch Shell were collaborating in the mapping of PNG’s hydrocarbon potential with a view to realising that potential.

On top of that, overseas Chinese interests are ripping jungles apart in their exploitation of hardwood forests for export to regional markets.

Corrupt politicians have enabled uncontrolled logging that is drawing a strong reaction from local green activists.

A PNG Greens party is set to make its presence felt in national elections due by mid-2012.

PricewaterhouseCoopers notes an extraordinary statistic in a research paper: in 2015, the first year of LNG production, PNG’s economy will experience projected 21.1 per cent GDP growth, up from an expected 8.9 per cent this year..

Kostas Constantinou
, one of PNG’s richest entrepreneurs – property, hotels and banking – uses an Australianism from his Christian Brothers education at Nudgee in Queensland to describe the boomtown atmosphere in Port Moresby.

“It’s whoosho,’’ Constantinou tells the Weekend Financial Review from his offices at the Lamana Hotel, where occupancy rates are through the roof – and so, too, are room charges. It’s also dangerous.

Constantinou’s father was murdered by a group of Port Moresby thugs after taking a wrong turn in his car, a local version of The Bonfire of the Vanities.

Now in his 80s, Sir Barry came to PNG as a young patrol officer and fell in love with the country and its people. He remembers Michael Somare’s maiden speech to parliament in the years before independence, in which he talked about a flag and an anthem.

Those were idealistic moments for a young nation and for those involved in uncertain steps towards statehood, including some of Australia’s most distinguished politicians, academics and bureaucrats.

Paul Hasluck’s stint as Territories Minister in the
Menzies
governments of the 1950s and 1960s is remembered as a particularly productive period in Australia’s relations with PNG.

Senior bureaucrats and academics, including John Crawford, “
Nugget" Coombs
and more recently
Ross Garnaut
have taken an interest in the place.

Garnaut taught at the University of Papua New Guinea and is close to the country’s leaders, including former prime minister Mekere Marauta.

Gough Whitlam
in opposition and in government was a champion of PNG’s development and helped expedite its steps towards independence. Among Whitlam’s last important forays abroad before his sacking by
John Kerr
on November 11, 1975, was to attend PNG’s independence celebrations on September 16, 1975.

Australia is PNG’s largest bilateral donor, accounting for about half of aid each year. Australian aid makes up about 5 per cent of the national budget and is critical to the country’s development, although much of it appears to have been wasted over the years.

Australia has lengthy historical connections with the place.

It administered the southern part of British New Guinea, renamed Papua, from 1904, and after World War I was given responsibility by the League of Nations for what had been German New Guinea.

The first Australian fatality of World War I was a naval rating, killed in an exchange with a German warship off Rabaul in 1914.

The combined Papua and New Guinea came into being after World War II as Australian trust territories (Papua and New Guinea under the United Nations).

This continued until independence in 1975.

Geologically, PNG is on the “Pacific ring of fire’’ where several tectonic plates collide. It is home to a number of active volcanoes. Earthquakes are relatively common, accompanied by tsunamis.

An earthquake measuring 7.3 on the Richter scale shook the country on Wednesday as political leaders – like tectonic plates – collided.